Richard Prebble
Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.
The Greens want to spend $4 billion bringing back long-distance passenger trains.
They say Infometrics has checked their figures.
I know a bit about railways.
As minister I helped turn railways from losing $1 million a day to earning $2 million a week. We doubled the freight carried and halved the cost.
I have since advised railways in Asia and Europe and was chairman of a joint venture railway company in Vietnam.
I could have saved the Greens the consultancy fee. I would have told them for free that their idea is nuts.
But they do not have to take my word for it.
The Greens campaigned for an Auckland-to-Hamilton passenger rail service that Labour agreed to.
In 2023/24 the taxpayer and ratepayer subsidy was estimated at $92 per passenger. Today the lowest advertised bus fare is about $20. A free bus service would have saved money.
Green transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter says:
“These tracks are already there, so we should use them.”
And that is the issue. It is a single-track railway and we already use it.
New Zealand has a freight railway. Ninety-three per cent of the network is single track.
A container does not care if its train waits in a siding for an oncoming train.
Passengers do.
Passenger trains need timetables. They need speed. They get priority.
KiwiRail itself says the single-track limits its capacity.
The Greens propose passenger trains through the Kaimai tunnel on our busiest freight track. Their plan says the line can take a passenger service by “scheduling adjustments for freight”.
In English: stop the freight train and let the passenger train through.
Do that often enough and shippers will send the freight by road.
We would be nuts to spend $4 billion to divert freight from rail to road to create a heavily subsidised passenger rail service.
This article was originally published by I’ve Been Thinking.
